Germany

Rosa von Praunheim portrays some Berlin citizens which are all connected to the GLBT community.
This doc works as a sequel to his 1989 movie “Überleben in New York” (Staying alive in New York) in some ways.Read More »

Quote:
Francis, 30-year-old refugee is the sole survivor of a boat which crossed the Mediterranean illegally from West Africa. When he wakes up on a beach in the south of Europe, he is determined to live a regular, decent life from now on. But he winds up in present-day Berlin where a stateless person without a work permit is treated just as mercilessly. He initially resists an offer to deal drugs in Hasenheide park, but then comes under the influence of Reinhold, his neurotic, sex-addicted pal, a drug dealer and human trafficker who takes him in. He is a man born to destroy the people around. When he meets club owner Eva and, after several dramatic experiences, the escort girl Mieze, he feels he’s found something for the first time, something he’s never known before: a little bit of happiness.Read More »

Undine works as a historian lecturing on Berlin’s urban development. But when the man she loves leaves her, the ancient myth catches up with her. Undine has to kill the man who betrays her and return to the water.Read More »

Rosa von Praunheim sheds light on his life story and the most important stages in it. Born Holger Radtke, he moved to Frankfurt am Main with his adoptive parents at the age of twelve. With his documentary `Not the homosexual is perverse, but the situation in which he lives’ from 1971, he is considered a cofounder of the political gay and lesbian movement in Germany.Read More »

This is the content of the second disc of Wandersplitter aka Moving Shrapnel, in which
Thomas Harlan revists his film and literary work.It is much more than an extra and more something like a second chapter to the first movie(here: link) which focuses more on Harlan’s life.

The two movies that are discussed are Torre Bela, which Harlan filmed during revolutionary uprisings in Portugal in the 70s and his (in)famous Wundkanal, an experiment which in an uncomfortable way explores the limits of art. Robert Kramer
made a movie about Wundkanal calld Notre Nazi.Read More »

Plot synopsis
Westfront 1918 (aka Comrades of 1918) was the first talkie effort from German filmmaker G. W. Pabst, which he made for Nero Films, a production company headed up by Seymour Nebenzahl. Like the contemporary Hollywood production All Quiet on the Western Front, Pabst’s film is a bitter, melancholy antiwar statement. The story concentrates on four German soldiers, sent to the front in the waning days of World War 1. The futility of killing an enemy who is already dead spiritually, and of being killed for a cause that has for all intents and purposes been resolved, is brought home to the viewer with both barrels. The astonishingly fluid camerawork of Fritz Arno puts the spectator in the thick of the battle, and the effect is both terrifying and heartbreaking To watch only a few moments of Westfront 1918, one might think that Pabst had been making sound pictures all his life, rather than a mere couple of months. – by Hal Erickson.Read More »

Review:
(taken from imdb)
Yet another Euro film based on the memoirs of goodtime gal Josephine Mutzenbacher (aside from several softcore, there were also the XXX SENSATIONAL JANINE and PROFESSIONAL JANINE). All credits are pseudonymous in the US video version. Several of the plot incidents are also found in PROFESSIONAL JANINE. Among the familiar set pieces are the party at the tavern, including the orchestra, and the missing watch scene.Read More »

In this second of a four part series, media artist Harun Farocki explores the interplay between modern warfare and electronic media using computer simulation and documentary footage. Originally presented as a simultaneous four-screen gallery video installation, the separate films are available exclusively on realeyz.tv. Director’s notes to Part II “In Twentynine Palms, we filmed an exercise with around 300 extras playing both Afghan and Iraqi civilian populations. A few dozen Marines stood guard and went on patrol. The maneuver town lay on a piece of land that rose slightly above the desert; its buildings were assembled out of containers. The scene looked like something modeled on the reality of a computer simulation.”Read More »

This chapter considers the fact that the pictures with which preparations were made for war are so very similar to the pictures with which war was evaluated afterward. But there is a difference: The program for commemorating traumatic experiences is somewhat cheaper. Nothing and no-one casts a shadow here.Read More »